The Dodgers team that opens the baseball season this weekend should be one of the most fun-to-watch in years. Too bad many fans won’t be able to do so.

For decades, even amid the rise of cable and satellite television, the Dodgers continued to show a lot of games on over-the-air TV. In 2013, they showed 50 games on Channel 9. Only one other major-league team was seen more on “free” channels.

So it may shock Southern Californians to find that in 2014, the Dodgers won’t show any games on free TV. Except for their turns on national broadcasts, all of their games will be on SportsNet L.A., Time Warner Cable’s new all-Dodgers channel. With other TV service providers balking at paying for the Dodgers content, it’s likely only Time Warner customers will see the opening games.

More disturbing, even if the TV companies reach a deal, there will still be the matter of fans who don’t have cable or satellite service — nearly 750,000 households in the Los Angeles area, more homes with rooftop antennas than anywhere else in the United States.

With the suddenness of a Clayton Kershaw fastball, the Dodgers are going from the baseball team offering the most free TV games to the biggest team offering none.

Along with the already-high price of attending games (by one report, an average ballpark experience for a family of four last year cost more than $200), the shift of teams’ programming to subscription TV continues the gentrification of sports.

Fans might be used to Lakers games being on all-Lakers Time Warner Cable SportsNet since 2012, and a Lakers game costing a family of four more than $500. Professional basketball in L.A. has long been the sport of the Hollywood elite.

But baseball seemed to be the sport for everyman. A game at which players of all sizes excel. A game that brought generations of Angelenos the summer pleasure of Vin Scully’s play-by-play on the radio and TV.

It’s a shame if the Dodgers’ new broadcasting schedule takes the game out of many young lives.

This is not just a sports issue. As columnist Tom Hoffarth noted, eventually a franchise like the Dodgers, which plays in a 52-year-old stadium, will ask city officials for approval or other help to make changes on its property — or a new venue. When it presents itself to taxpayers as a beloved community treasure, how many might regard the team less warmly than they do now?

The Dodgers are a private company, and may do business as they choose. It’s the $8.35 billion that Time Warner is paying the Dodgers over 25 years that made it worth the new owners buying the club for $2.15 billion from Frank McCourt in 2012. And those TV riches are one reason the Dodgers can afford the biggest player payroll in baseball — including the more than $30 million a year they’re promising Kershaw.

Advertisement

Their riches help to make the Dodgers contenders to reach the World Series for the first time since their 1988 championship. It’s no accident that Major League Baseball chose the Dodgers as one of the teams to spread the sport’s popularity by opening this season in Sydney, Australia. (The games against the Arizona Diamondbacks are being played Saturday at 1 a.m. PDT and 7 p.m. PDT.)

Some fans may believe part of their cable subscriptions are part of the cost of cheering for a winner. But many others might prefer a slightly less star-studded team that they could afford to watch.